A Place to Stand

Could this be part of the reason for high crime levels in Britain

After months of being taunted by a gang of yobs, grandmother Diane Bond finally stood up to them when she was abused while walking her pet dog. During a torrent of foul-mouthed abuse, the frail 64-year-old prodded the teenager ringleader gently in the stomach when he urged her to "Hit me, if you dare".

Moments later, the 5ft 1ins pensioner found herself flat on her back and nursing a broken arm after the 15-year-old boy, who was 7 inches taller, pushed her to the ground. But to add insult to injury, police officers arrested her for assaulting a child after his mother moaned he had been attacked

.........As I approached they started shouting abuse at me," she said. "They were taunting me and crowding round me and I was quite frightened because they are big kids.

"After a while one of them, whose name is Billy, spread his arms out wide to show his stomach, and said, Come on, old lady, hit me, if you dare."

"I gave him three prods, almost like playful punches, not hard at all, and next thing I knew I was lying on the ground and I had broken my arm. One youth said I had been pushed.

Any newspaper tale should be treated with suspicion but it is impossible to believe that the kids were being threatened by this 64 year old grandmother.

This non sequitur from the police suggests they know exactly what the problem was & are very complacent about doing little about it.

Chief Inspector Steve Hughson, of Dyfed-Powys Police, said: "We are aware of the problems in Nelson Street and associated anti-social behaviour.

"Recent patrols in the area by the neighbourhood policing team have greatly reduced incidents of crime and anti social behaviour, to the extent that positive comments have been received by local residents. Therefore patrols will continue."

The article mentions that the boy's mother was, shall we say, overprotective about her little darling. It doesn't mention his father & I would be willing to take an even money bet that he isn't present which I am coming to suspect is another large part of the problem.

BILLIONAIRE businessman Richard Branson is considering turning a Scottish RAF base into a space airport. [call it a spaceport - Neil]

Bosses from Virgin Galactic were visiting RAF Lossiemouth in north-east Scotland today, to see if it could be used for take-off.

The firm, which is part of Sir Richard's Virgin empire, is planning to send passengers 87 miles above Earth using spaceships attached to aeroplanes.

Customers who pay around £106,000 for a ticket will get to experience five minutes of weightlessness during their ride.

Five spaceships and two aircraft are being built over the next four years, with flights possibly starting in 2008.

From the Scotsman. The whole new current space effort owes absolutely nothing to NASA, ESA & government agencies generally & has happened because some years ago somebody put up a $10 million X-Prize for the first private enterprise craft to get into space. Who would have thought this would affect Lossiemouth. This is the thing about new technology - you never know everything it can achieve until you have done it.Lossiemouth, for overseas readers is a town in the north of Scotland with a large RAF base & not, as described in Yes Minister, a disease.

The X-Prize has been so successful that Branson has a competitor based in Singapore. It seems that he is intending to show clients the Aurora Borealis from space, which sounds breathtaking & so is flying from a northern location whereas Space Adventures is, more conventionally, taking advantage of the extra centripetal force available at the equator.

Some years agoIi tried to get politicians to at least look at putting up a small sum towards a Scottish X-Prize but the party (now proposing to spend $3 billion on a railway) weren't interested. Oh well. It seems history moves on.

I think this commenton Iain Dale's blog deserves further exposure. Iain was running an item on the faking of various pictures at Qana which has now been verified to the discomfort of a number of people commenting there. I had also commented previously on the blatant fakinery involved in Bosnia & Kosovo.

Richard Bailey said...
Iain, I didn't comment then but will now. Well done for both posts. Your instincts were always right. I saw for myself in Kosovo how people on the ground manipulate images and especially the media. Never ever trust what you see on the evening news.
I looked after the BBC team in Pristina during my time their, acting aas their military escort and PR man. Hell, even their most famous and undoubtedly brilliant premiere reporter knew EXACTLY what she intended to say on that evening's news before the day had begun, and I can assure you that odd things were done to achieve it if the day didn't quite offer up the required backdrops. We spent one afternoon looking for a burning building and racing to get there before it went out!!
The Kosovans knew exactly what they were doing when they pitched camp in Macedonia and they used Blair visits for their means far more than he used them for his!
I know, I was there, and to my eternal shame, I helped ensure that the right shots were taken and the right tents were visited.
Enough said.

My italics added. Let us not ever, under any circumstances, have anybody from the lying racists of the BBC ever claiming that they do not manufacture the news. I replied

Thank you Richard Bailey for your post.

The lying the media has been, at the very least, involved in goes back to Kosovo & Bosnia & I suspect, much further.

I am not sure how much the present exposures are due to the existence of the blogsphere being able to present views & facts the official media censor & how much to the fact that Hezbollah do not have the general level of government support the ex-Nazi Izetbegovic in Bosnia & our genocidal KLA friends had.

I suspect that something like 50% optimism is justified.

Incidentally I think this is another example of where the entire left/right dichotomy breaks down. Iain is a Tory & economically a fairly pro capitalist one. His blog is clearly run specificly to push Toryism. Nonetheless he is obviously not pushing the "trust the great & good" position which what traditionally the Tory party was about. On the other hand most opponents would call themselves comparatively left wing yet are supporting the "left wing" opposition to Israel. If supporting terrorists is left wing, & pointing out dishonesty by the state broadcasting system is right wing then I suggest left & right are now politically meaningless.

This table of recorded crime makes interesting reading;

#1 Dominica 113.822 per 1,000 people
#2 New Zealand 105.881 per 1,000 people
#3 Finland 101.526 per 1,000 people
#4 Denmark 92.8277 per 1,000 people
#5 Chile 88.226 per 1,000 people
#6 United Kingdom 85.5517 per 1,000 people
#7 Montserrat 80.3982 per 1,000 people
#8 United States 80.0645 per 1,000 people
#9 Netherlands 79.5779 per 1,000 people
#10 South Africa 77.1862 per 1,000 people
#11 Germany 75.9996 per 1,000 people
#12 Canada 75.4921 per 1,000 people
#13 Norway 71.8639 per 1,000 people
#14 France 62.1843 per 1,000 people
#15 Seychelles 52.9265 per 1,000 people
#16 Hungary 44.9763 per 1,000 people
#17 Estonia 43.3601 per 1,000 people
#18 Czech Republic 38.2257 per 1,000 people
#19 Italy 37.9633 per 1,000 people
#20 Switzerland 36.1864 per 1,000 people
#21 Portugal 34.3833 per 1,000 people
#22 Slovenia 33.6236 per 1,000 people
#23 Poland 32.8573 per 1,000 people
#24 Korea, South 31.7267 per 1,000 people
#25 Mauritius 29.1982 per 1,000 people
#26 Zimbabwe 28.8753 per 1,000 people
#27 Lithuania 22.8996 per 1,000 people
#28 Spain 22.8867 per 1,000 people
#29 Latvia 21.921 per 1,000 people
#30 Uruguay 21.7017 per 1,000 people
#31 Russia 20.5855 per 1,000 people
#32 Ireland 20.2376 per 1,000 people
#33 Bulgaria 19.9886 per 1,000 people
#34 Japan 19.177 per 1,000 people
#35 Romania 16.4812 per 1,000 people
#36 Slovakia 16.3537 per 1,000 people
#37 Jamaica 14.3231 per 1,000 people
#38 Belarus 13.1592 per 1,000 people
#39 Mexico 12.8406 per 1,000 people
#40 Tunisia 12.5634 per 1,000 people
#41 Costa Rica 11.9788 per 1,000 people
#42 Ukraine 11.7793 per 1,000 people
#43 Hong Kong 11.6817 per 1,000 people
#44 Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of 9.689 per 1,000 people
#45 Greece 9.6347 per 1,000 people
#46 Venezuela 9.307 per 1,000 people
#47 Thailand 8.80422 per 1,000 people
#48 Moldova 8.58967 per 1,000 people
#49 Kyrgyzstan 7.50486 per 1,000 people
#50 Malaysia 6.97921 per 1,000 people
#51 Qatar 6.76437 per 1,000 people
#52 Zambia 5.27668 per 1,000 people
#53 Colombia 4.98654 per 1,000 people
#54 Turkey 4.11252 per 1,000 people
#55 Armenia 4.03889 per 1,000 people
#56 Georgia 3.21338 per 1,000 people
#57 Papua New Guinea 2.39711 per 1,000 people
#58 Azerbaijan 1.76416 per 1,000 people
#59 India 1.63352 per 1,000 people
#60 Yemen 1.16109 per 1,000 people
Weighted average: 33.7 per 1,000 people

6th place & more importantly ahead of any large size country is pretty dreadful. The smaller the country the less valid the statistical sample which could, at least in part, explain why New Zealand, Finland & Denmark, not normally thought of as hotbeds of vice, are ahead of the UK. Even the US, which we are used to looking down on over their enthusiasm for shooting each other is 2 places better than Britain. Now I will perfectly happily accept that this is reported crime which the local police have decided to record. I do not believe that Georgia (56) or Moldova (48) have 30 times less crime than here - I suspect that it is merely that most people don't involve the authorities. Nonetheless countries like Japan (34) & Hong Kong (43) should be closely comparable to us.

I intend to do a bit more research on trends here & will repost when I have some conclusions.

On Monday the Scotsman carried a fairly heart-rending story (& likely to pluck at anybody worried about our dreadful shortage of dentists) about an Indian woman dentist who was about to be expelled because she didn't fit all the rules.

A FOREIGN dentist keen to carry on working in Scotland's critically understaffed dental service is being forced to return to her own country because immigration officials do not consider her to be a "highly skilled" migrant.

Despite having the offer of a permanent job from her current employers in Fife, officials have told Siddhika Sathyamoorthy that because, among other criteria, she did not earn more than £27,000 last year or have a highly- qualified husband or partner, she will not be allowed to remain in Scotland.....

Initially I commented on it about how we should welcome properly qualified people here (which I believe - the problem is when you get large numbers of unskilled people speaking little English). However a later post got me thinking that perhaps this is another non-story designed by our political class to sell immigration as acceptable by publicising particular cases.

29. Pralay, London / 3:06pm 7 Aug 2006 I think the basic point is being missed here.

Nothing is stopping her from working in the UK - she's just applied under the wrong category. The Highly Skilled Migrant Program is specifically for people with a certain level of education, experience and earning capacity. the rules are clear and set out in black and white.

On the other hand, if it is a proven skill shortage area, the employers should have no problem obtaining a work permit for her.

It is easy to blame and abuse the system in ignorance. I am an Indian working in London and have been here for the past two years on a Working holidaymaker, which has allowed me to work without restriction.

If you are keen to stay in the UK, the least you can do is spend some time and effort in trying to understand which immigration policies are in your favour, and apply accordingly.

If I was her, I would not have applied for the HSMP in the first place - a look at the criteria on the website is enough to make it obvious that she doesn't qualify or even come close.

I find this credible. In which case there is no real chance she will be deported at all. It is indeed a non-story. By comparison I was told personally recently of a Gorani (Moslem Serb) couple forcibly deported from Sotland back to Kosovo & the tender mercies of our KLA allies. Clearly they were less photogenic.

May we look forward to many more such photogenic non-stories. My suspicion is that we may.

An article well worth reading on how the photos of Qana were, at the very least, posed.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/07/milking-it.html

Essentially the same "aid worker" appears in over a dozen photos within a few minutes, in various sorts of attire "discovering" dead & injured.

This is, of course, old hat. The media have been going about this for at least the 16 years of the Yugoslav wars The ITN "accidentally" faked video being merely one. It may very well be that Hezbollah have been learning how to do it from our Bosnian Nazi allies. On the other hand there are 2 major differences this time. Firstly there is journalistic support for the other side this time, particularly in America. Secondly while in Yugoslavia it seems likely that the CIA were in there faking as hard as anybody the aren't helping this time. The CIA faked satellite photos of the Srebrenica "mass graves" proving that they were new by producing before & after photos taken "24 hours apart". When it was spotted that not only had a mass grave been created in those "24 hours" but so had a new house. Equally we have the advice given to Izetbegovic that what he needed was aa incident to like a marketplace shelling to justify western bombing, shortly before 1 of the 3 marketplace massacres carried out by our Nazi friend & blamed on the Serbs to justify aggression. Then we have the alleged Srebrenica Massacre where the US government told Izetbegovic that what he needed was a massacre of at least 5,000 which duly got faked. There is also the Racak Massacre "discovered" by America's top human rights expert, William Walker, CIA asset, former US ambassador (read governor general) of El Salvador & apologist for death squads there. The attack on Yugoslavia was ultimately justified on the basis of his claim that this was not a firefight but a massacre of civilians shot "execution style" in the face. If Walker is not an obscene corrupt murdering Nazi as well as being the US governments top human rights expert this must be true. At the milosevic trial, after forensic evidence had been produced that most of the victims had powder burns on their hands, thus proving they were combatants & nobody had been shot in the face he admitted at the Milosevic "trial" that he had made it up. The media decided not to report it.

This is yet another example like al Quaeda, many of the world's drug lords, the Mafia godfather Carlos Marcello who helped Oswald & controlled Ruby, & the SS General Gehlen who helped found the CIA, as well as ODESSA & the German secret service. In all of these cases the US has found that funding these genocidal thugs has come back to bite them (as well as the rest of us). It now appears that the media tricks the CIA taught are also coming back to them.

The good news is that where, in Yugoslavia, we only had the integrity of journalists & High Court judges to rely on (yes I'm referring to the judge in the LM case who said the truth "doesn't matter") we now have the blogsphere. The proving that these photos were arranged has come, not from eagle-eyed journalists but from bloggers. Indeed even though it is clearly proven that this very important story was faked the official media have barely mentioned it. There have been cases in the US where bloggers have caught the big media lying/accidentally not telling the truth but this story may mark the watershed where it is no longer possible to pretend that the blogsphere is full of conspiracy anoraks & the TV & papers tell the authoritative version. IpNow if you want the authoritative facts go to the blogsphere.

And in the best tradition of the blogsphere being a bunch of nutters threatening death & destruction a Reuters (yes the Reuters which started international news reporting by sending pigeons to London to say that Napoleon had lost at Waterloo) rep has informed Little Green Footballs that they are 'I look forward to day when you pigs get your throats cut' & left his fingerprints on it too. Stupid boys.